The Splintered Kingdom c-2

by James Aitcheson

  I often likened the March to a patchwork made from scraps of land from hundreds of different lordships, stitched together by grants made in charters and writs, by oaths and by a common desire to keep out the Welsh who threatened their lands. Such a patchwork, however, was only as strong as the threads that joined its various pieces, and since those threads were woven from words alone, they were easily broken. While many of the holdings belonged to newly endowed men like myself, who had won their lordships in the years since the invasion, by and large those who held greatest influence on the borderlands belonged to the old families of Normandy: lineages which in more than a few cases harked back as far as the days of Charlemagne, who had been king of the Franks some two and a half centuries before. They saw the newcomers as troublesome and ambitious upstarts, hungry for wealth and adventure and power, and as such not to be trusted. In return they were greeted with, if not hostility, then at the very least frosty indifference.

  Now that both sides were brought together in one place, though, their petty squabbles and jealousies boiled over into open confrontation. A dozen men were killed in that week alone; on one particular morning three bodies were found floating face-down in the river, so bloated with water that their features were unrecognisable and no one was able to say who they were. Still more were injured: one man lost his hand when a brawl over a game of dice ended in swords being drawn; another was badly burnt when he was pushed into a brazier for lying with someone else’s woman; and others I had witnessed and heard of were missing ears and fingers in retribution for slights both real and imagined.

  Amongst my own men, too, tension was growing. At first it was nothing more than the usual exchange of snide remarks and lewd jokes at each other’s expense: the sort of thing that I had long since grown used to. But all too soon the thrill of at last being on campaign and amongst fellow warriors wore off, and it became ever harder for them to hold their tongues. Even I had to fight hard to restrain the resentment simmering within me: resentment towards Robert, towards Guillaume fitz Osbern, but most of all towards the Welsh, whose fault it was that we had been dragged here. We had left Earnford in such a rush, yet until Fitz Osbern decided what should be done, we could only sit on our backsides and wait. Altogether it only served to put me more on edge, and over those few days I confess I was not an easy man to be around.

  To that Eudo would also attest, after I nearly took his head off in a training fight. We were using oak cudgels rather than swords, but even so a blow from one of those could hurt if it struck home; I knew from experience. When Eudo followed too far through a stroke, instinct took over. While he struggled to recover, I saw my chance, backhanding a swing towards his head with all the strength I could muster. He saw it coming just in time to twist and duck beneath it, losing his balance and landing on his face in the mud, prompting sniggers from those who happened to be watching.

  Cursing, he got to his feet, ignoring the hand I extended to help him up, and stood red-faced before me. ‘God’s teeth, Tancred. Are you trying to kill me?’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I’ll live, though no thanks to you.’ He spat on the ground, his face twisted into an expression of distaste, and he wiped some of the dirt from his cheek, rubbing it on his tunic and his trews.

  ‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘Well, next time think harder. The way you came at me, anyone would think it was Eadgar?theling you were fighting.’

  The sun was almost upon the horizon by then and Eudo wasn’t in the mood to fight any more, so we left the practice yard, making our way past paddocks where the horses grazed contentedly, towards the black and gold. Carts drawn by teams of oxen trundled past, laden with hay or barrels of ale and bundles of straw. The smell of stewed vegetables and roasting meat drifted on the breeze. From down by the river floated the soft notes of a flute, soon joined by drunken voices singing a song of distant lands.

  ‘I’m frustrated, that’s all,’ I said as we walked. ‘The longer we stay here, the worse it gets. Sometimes I wish the Welsh would attack now, if they’re going to come at all.’

  ‘What you need is to feel the warmth of a good woman,’ said Eudo. ‘That’ll soon see to your frustration. Fitz Osbern might have ordered the stews closed but if you go with good silver to some of the alehouses they’ll see that your needs are satisfied. There’s one not far from the town gates where the girls are pretty and none too expensive either.’

  ‘The cost isn’t what worries me,’ I said. ‘It’s more your idea of pretty. Last time I remember ending up with a great sow of a girl who smelt as if she hadn’t washed in about ten years.’

  He laughed. ‘You always did have an eye for the slim ones. I’ll keep a lookout next time I’m there and see if there are any you might like.’

  ‘In any case,’ I said, ‘what happened to Censwith?’

  Of all the girls Eudo had known, she was the only one he had kept going back to; the very fact that he had often spoken of her by name marked her out. As long as I had known him he had never cared much for matters of the heart, and I had thought nothing about it at the time, but since Eoferwic last year he had often spoken of buying her freedom from the man in Sudwerca who owned her, and even of taking her for his wife.

  ‘She died is what happened,’ Eudo said. ‘Caught a fever last spring and never recovered. I saw her for the last time as she lay on her deathbed. I’ll never forget how weak she looked and how fragile, though I’m not sure she even recognised who I was.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I could not think of anything else to say.

  Eudo sighed. ‘I never did get the chance to free her. Still, if there are whorehouses in heaven then I hope to find her there someday.’

  I rested my hand on his shoulder in sympathy. We were nearing the great pavilion when from behind came the blast of a war-horn. I turned to see a column of men approaching on the other side of the river but making for the bridge, towards our camp: several hundred of them, most riding what looked like short draught horses or else sturdy ponies, and flying a banner I did not recognise, depicting a yellow-gold serpent on a green field.

  ‘Whose device is that?’ Eudo asked.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ It didn’t belong to Earl Hugues; that much was certain. In fact I couldn’t think of any of the Marcher lords who used a snake as their device. To be able to raise a host numbering in the hundreds such as they had brought, they must hold a great deal of power, with estates and vassals spread across several shires. And yet were that the case then I was fairly certain I would have heard of them before now.

  They halted on the open ground on the approach to the river; again their horns sounded. A few dismounted and waved to the knights guarding the crossing, who had already formed a shield-wall several men deep across the bridge in case they should try to attack. It did not look to me as if they had come to fight, though, but rather as if they were requesting a parley.

  Two of them rode forwards from the ranks with their banner-bearer a short way behind them, waving the green and yellow flag high for all to see. From so far away it was hard to make out much, but even so I could see that both men had come dressed for war, with sword-hilts inlaid with glittering rubies, helmets with nasal-pieces and cheek-plates inlaid with shining gold. Evidently they were men of some wealth, and they were not afraid to flaunt it either.

  ‘Fitz Osbern,’ one of them called out, cupping his hands around his mouth. ‘We wish to speak with Fitz Osbern!’

  His French was halting, as if it were not his natural tongue, and I wondered if they were Englishmen: some of those thegns, perhaps, who had submitted to King Guillaume instead of continuing the struggle in the weeks after H?stinges. In return for being allowed to keep their lands they were required to fight against their countrymen, and they often joined us on campaign, though as turncoats they were held in little regard, and the oaths they had given were seen by many as less than worthless. But their names and the colours of their banners were commonly known, and the golden
snake was not one of them.

  Fitz Osbern was not in his pavilion and a message had to be sent to the castle where he was in council with the castellan — a kinsman of his by the name of Roger de Montgommeri, who was also a vicomte in Normandy — as well as some of the other nobles, Lord Robert among them. It was some time before he appeared but eventually I spied him, and I knew it was him because of his balding pate and greying hair. He rode at the head of a score of mailed knights to meet the two men upon the bridge. What was said I could not make out, but they knelt down before him, removing their gilded helms and bowing their heads. After a while Fitz Osbern motioned them to their feet and the two men, each accompanied by a dozen spearmen, followed him on horse to the castle.

  ‘They’re Welshmen,’ Robert told us when he returned a few hours later.

  ‘Welshmen?’ I echoed, disbelieving. I could see that I spoke for everyone else warming themselves by the dwindling campfire too. ‘What do they want with Fitz Osbern?’

  ‘They’ve come to join us, or so they say. Their names are Maredudd and Ithel; they’re the sons of the great King Gruffydd who used to hold sway over all of Wales, until he was overthrown and slain by the hand of a certain Harold Godwineson some seven years ago.’

  ‘Harold the usurper?’ asked Turold.

  ‘The very same,’ Robert replied. ‘Although this was long before he seized the crown, when he was merely earl of Hereford and Wessex, although he was a powerful man even then. They say that the kingdoms of Powys and Gwynedd belong to them by right; that they were deprived of their inheritance by the brothers Bleddyn and Rhiwallon whom Harold set up as rulers in the wake of his campaign.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ I said. ‘If they truly wanted to win back their inheritance then why have they waited seven years before finally marching?’

  ‘Until recently it seems they lacked the support of the other highborn families,’ Robert replied. ‘But since Bleddyn and Rhiwallon made common cause with the exiled English thegns it seems that there has been growing discontent. Many of those families remember Harold’s campaign and the slaughter that the English visited upon their lands. Many lost their homes and their sons to the sword-edges of those same men who now seek help from them.’

  ‘Any enemy of the usurper is surely a friend of ours,’ put in Turold. ‘As long as they bring men, what does it matter?’

  At the very least I supposed they were taking away men who might otherwise have filled out the ranks of the enemy shield-wall. But though I could well believe the extent of their hatred for the English, it was hard to imagine they would simply swear their allegiance to another foreign lord without some design of their own.

  ‘There must be more to it than that; some other prize on offer,’ I said. ‘Otherwise why would they take up arms against their own countrymen and in doing so risk losing the lands they already hold?’

  ‘You’re quite right,’ said Robert. ‘In return for them bringing their men to fight under our banners, Gruffydd’s sons want nothing less than our help in regaining their birthright and restoring their titles to them.’

  Serlo spluttered; droplets of wine dribbled down his chin and he dried it on his sleeve. ‘For the sake of a few hundred spears they would have us deliver them an entire kingdom?’

  ‘Two kingdoms,’ Pons said sourly. ‘Powys and Gwynedd both.’

  Of course if Maredudd and Ithel succeeded, then those who had sided with them would be generously rewarded. Not only must they have great faith in Gruffydd’s sons, then, but they must be very confident too that we would accept their price, steep though it was.

  ‘Fitz Osbern will never agree to that,’ Serlo muttered. ‘Only a fool makes a bargain with a Welshman. They have no sense of honour; they’re oath-breakers, every one of them.’

  Usually I would have sided with Serlo; experience of living on the March this past year had taught me to trust the Welsh even less than the English. But at the same time I understood that this was about far more than just inheritance or power. For if Fitz Osbern could ensure that the rulers across the dyke were friendly to us, sworn to him personally through the giving of hostages and by oaths of fealty, and that they paid tribute to King Guillaume, then we might never need to fear raids by the Welsh again. At a time when the realm was beset with threats on all sides, it would give us the respite we sorely needed to quell our other enemies.

  ‘If it can buy us peace on the March, maybe that’s a bargain worth making,’ I said. ‘Even if that peace lasts only for a while. And God knows we need the men.’

  We had been in Scrobbesburh five days already; in that time we had received no word from Ceastre, and I knew that Fitz Osbern was growing anxious about whether Earl Hugues would come at all. Nor had the spies he had sent to scout the lands beyond the dyke yet returned, which meant we had no way of knowing how soon it would be before the enemy marched in force.

  ‘I don’t trust them,’ Serlo said. ‘Who’s to say their coming here isn’t part of some ruse designed to trap us?’

  ‘Why go to so much trouble, though?’ I asked him. ‘Why bring such an army all this way if there’s a chance that Fitz Osbern will just send them away?’

  Serlo gave a shrug but didn’t answer. Instead he said: ‘I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. First they’ll try to worm their way into our confidence and then at the first chance they get they’ll turn on us. Far better for Fitz Osbern to kill them now and be done with it.’

  ‘In that case,’ Robert said sharply, ‘it’s probably as well that the decision rests with him and not with you.’

  Indeed, for the time being at least Fitz Osbern seemed willing to trust them, since in spite of the open displeasure of several of the leading barons, Maredudd and Ithel were allowed to stay, setting up their camp at his direction on the other side of the river where there was less chance of their men clashing with our own, most of whom held the Welsh in as little regard as Serlo and were all too ready for a fight.

  Still, they did not have too long to wait for better news. It came the next day in the form of Hugues d’Avranches, the Wolf of Ceastre, whose black banner and pennons were first sighted approaching on the northern road around midday. He arrived at the head of a contingent of fifty knights and another one hundred and twenty foot-soldiers, with many more due to follow in the days to come as his vassals and tenants left their feasting-halls and rode out from their strongholds.

  Accompanying him was Wace together with his three household knights. It was the first that I had seen of him since the previous summer, although he had not changed much in that time. Indeed he was as I had always known him: broad-shouldered and thickset, with arms like a smith’s. Below his eye was the scar from the blow that he had taken at H?stinges, which had left him able only to half open it, though he could still see nearly as well as before. Well enough, at least, that he had sent countless foemen to their deaths in the years since.

  ‘You should see a barber,’ were his first words when he saw me. ‘With all that hair you look like one of them.’

  He meant the English, of course, and straightaway I found myself on edge. But then Wace often had a way of doing that to people: it was the sort of remark that was typical of him, and I should have known better than to expect anything else. His blunt manner had often brought him trouble over the years, not to mention Eudo and myself as well at times. Together the three of us had grown up, trained at arms and learnt the art of horsemanship; together we had fought our first battles and ridden on campaign across the length and the breadth of Christendom. And now of all the knights who had once served beneath the hawk banner of Robert de Commines, the one-time Earl of Northumbria, we three were the only ones left alive.

  ‘We were wondering when you’d arrive,’ I said. ‘There was talk that the Wolf might ignore the summons altogether.’

  ‘He’s not here out of any especial loyalty to Guillaume fitz Osbern, that much is for certain,’ Wace replied in his usual flat tone. ‘He made us wait two full days and nights bef
ore he eventually came to a decision. I was starting to think he’d never give us an answer and that we’d have no choice but to return without him.’

  Despite Hugues’s youth he was evidently far from guileless. He knew that the tale would spread, and in refusing to respond to the summons immediately he was making a clear assertion of his power. I suspected that Fitz Osbern would not be best pleased when it reached his ears, though in truth there was little he could do about it. He was wise and experienced enough to understand that they did not have to like each other as individuals, so long as their men could be trusted to stand shoulder to shoulder in the shield-wall and protect each other’s flanks in the charge; that was all that mattered. Kingdoms had been won and lost before on little more than the strength of the bond between those fighting on one side or the other, and there was no sense in further kindling the flames of their quarrel if that led to ruin on the field of battle.

  ‘I’m surprised he came at all,’ Eudo said. ‘There’s no love lost between those two.’

  Wace’s face was grim. ‘To tell the truth, I don’t think it was an easy decision for Earl Hugues to make. The same rumours about the Welsh have been heard in Ceastre; they fear an attack by the men of Gwynedd along the coast. Earl Hugues has had to leave several hundred men to garrison the city.’

  That was a setback, certainly, though I supposed he had little choice when his own earldom was at risk. No one could say yet what the enemy planned, and I supposed that by gathering all his forces in one place Fitz Osbern hoped to be prepared for whatever happened, since he could not hope to defend the entire length of the March at once.

  After a while talk moved on from news of the Welsh. I asked Wace about his manor in Suthfolc and he introduced me to his men, who were busying themselves setting up tents and building a fire close by the black and gold. But all the while my thoughts kept returning to Earl Hugues and his fears of attack upon his lands. For as concerned as the Wolf was for Ceastre, so I was for Earnford. I wondered how Father Erchembald was managing in my absence, and how?dda was faring under his care. I supposed that if anything had happened that was worth hearing about, news of it would already have reached us. But then again, if the enemy moved quickly enough, we might not know until it was too late. All I could do was pray that no harm would come to them, and pray too that I would be able to keep the promise I had made.